The present invention relates generally to telecommunication networks and services and more specifically to broadband networks and services.
By comparison to today's mature telephony networks, nationwide broadband networks are in their early infancy phase. In this application, the term broadband includes video information (both moving and still images) as well as conventional voice and alphanumeric data. Over the past few years, the industry has spent considerable effort to develop broadband access, switching, and transmission technology. However, little effort has been devoted to integrating and controlling broadband networks. As a result, there is no commonly accepted architecture for the control of broadband networks. In addition, there are very few standards or industry requirements defining control functions, interfaces, and protocols for broadband networks.
While certain vendors, e.g. AT&T and Fujitsu, may offer end-to-end solutions with control capacities integrated into broadband access and switching products, these approaches are proprietary and, when considered for large scale deployment, are characterized by the same drawbacks and challenges which were attributed to switch based telephony services over 20 years ago, i.e., service implementation, deployment and uniformity problems, as well as, limited service customization.
It is therefore desirable to provide a broadband network and services that substantially obviate one or more of the problems due to limitations and disadvantages of the related art.
It is also desirable to provide a broadband network in which network operators can quickly respond to changing market demands to rapidly create, test, and deploy new services in the broadband network.
It is further desirable to extend existing service creation and service control features and functionality to support the creation and execution of broadband services in a broadband network.
It is still further desirable to provide a system and method for generating broadband services and for provisioning those broadband services in an execution environment quickly and efficiently.
It is desirable to provide efficient and inexpensive systems and methods for providing video-on-demand services.
It is also desirable to provide efficient and inexpensive systems and methods for providing videoconferencing services.
It is also desirable to provide an integrated broadband network and telephone network.
It is also desirable to provide an integrated broadband/ telephone network in which network operators can quickly respond to changing market demands to rapidly create, test, and deploy new services.
It is further desirable to provide a system and method for generating services in an integrated broadband/telephone network and for provisioning those services in an execution environment quickly and efficiently.
It is still further desirable to provide efficient and inexpensive systems and methods for providing caller identification services.
Additional objectives, features, and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the written description and appended claims hereof as well as the appended drawings.